SUNG BY A CHOIR OF PENITENT PROSTITUTES
[MAGDALEN CHAPEL.]
The Hymns Anthems and Tunes with the Ode used at the Magdalen Chapel set for the Organ Harpsichord, Voice German-Flute or Guitar. Book I.
London, Printed for Longman and Broderip … [1780?].
[bound after:]
The Hymns, Anthems & Tunes, with the Ode used at the Magdalen Chapel sett for the Organ, Harpsichord, Voice, German-Flute, or Guitar. Book 1. London, Printed & sold by Preston & Son … [1797?].
Two works, large 8vo, pp. [2], 42; and pp. [2], 40, [2], each with a frontispiece of a Magdalen in her Uniform; engraved throughout; the first work printed on paper watermarked 1797; fine copies, in early nineteenth-century (endpapers dated 1812) half red morocco and marbled boards, unidentified monogram booklabel.
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The Hymns Anthems and Tunes with the Ode used at the Magdalen Chapel set for the Organ Harpsichord, Voice German-Flute or Guitar. Book I.
Two rare later editions of the Magdalen Chapel hymnbook.
The Magdalen Hospital was founded in 1758 in Whitechapel for the rehabilitation of ‘penitent prostitutes’, its denizens being able-bodied (the venereal went to the Lock Hospital), and of an average age of fourteen. ‘The singing of psalms, hymns, and responses by the Magdalens became a great attraction of London society’(Temperley), especially in the 1770s after a move to larger premises in Southwark, where its octagonal chapel became a fashionable place of worship, the choir of penitents concealed by a grill or a canvas screen to protect their modesty. Though the Hospital never issued its own hymnbook, a variety of commercial publications capitalised on this popularity. The first of these was Thomas Call’s The Tunes & Hymns as they are used at the Magdalen Chapel (1760), which printed 22 tunes (11 of which were new), which was quickly pirated in an edition by Philips. From around 1765 to 1775 Henry Thorowgood published a series of four books of Tunes (later re-issued by Longman), adding a distinctive frontispiece of a Magdalen.
The Longman and Broderip edition, with 25 hymns, 2 anthems, and the Ode, is a reissue of that of Henry Thorowgood (c. 1766), whose name is visible faintly under theirs on the title-page). The Preston & Son edition is an earlier issue than that listed by Nicholas Temperley, which is on paper watermarked 1806. The contents are identical to the Longman edition but entirely re-engraved, as is the frontispiece – rather more finely. Although Preston did not issue separate editions of Books I–IV, he did publish a ‘Fifth Set’ in c. 1790 as well as a full combined edition in 1810.
I: not in ESTC, which only lists a Companion to the Magdalen-Chapel printed by Longman and Broderip. Library Hub records copies at NLS, BL, and Bodley; OCLC adds Oberlin College and UC Berkeley.
II: not in ESTC. Library Hub records only a later printing at the BL (watermark 1806); OCLC adds Harvard, and British Columbia, with a suggested date of [179–?].
See Nicholas Temperley, ‘The Hymn Books of the Foundling and Magdalen Hosptial Chapels’, in Studies in English Church Music 1550–1900 – his edition B2/c, and cf. B1/g.
